Authors Note Edit: This Fic was originally posted on Spacebattles, and was then posted on AO3. It is now being posted here. I'm Sift Green, and my Co-author is AndrewJTalon. Hope you enjoy.
Second Authors Not Edit: AJT recommended a header to go at the start of each chapter. Here it is:
The Great Temporal Step-Sibling War!
By Sift Green and AndrewJTalon
Disclaimer: This is a fan based work of Prose. RWBY is the property of Rooster Teeth and ViZ. Please support the official Release.
'No mater how long you live, life will still find ways to surprise you,' Ozpin reflected as he took a deliberately slow sip from his coffee mug, keeping his eyes locked on the young man sitting across from his desk. Said young man was more child than teen, barely old enough to be starting Signal Academy. He had been caught snooping around Beacon's offices, trying to break into the records room. The secret records room only five people on campus were supposed to know about. Glynda caught him of course, and she brought the young man straight to the headmaster's office once she uncovered a few irregularities with the boy's identification.
A library card, a student ID from Signal, and a medical information card were all spread out on Ozpin's desk. All of them said the boy's name was Moses Nebogipfel, and the boy responded to the name too reflexively for it to be fake. All three of them either had an accurate picture of the boy or an accurate physical description, which lended credence to the idea that the cards were as real as they looked. Yet the cards were impossible.
All three cards agreed that the boy's birthday was Victory Day... five years from now. The cards claimed the boy's mother was a Dr. Weena Nebogipfel, a woman both Ozpin and Glynda knew personally, so while the boy did bear some resemblance to the theoretical physicist the idea that he was her secret child was absurd.
When confronted with these facts the boy had immediately cracked; "My semblance is Time Travel!" That confession had lead to a series of tests that convinced Ozpin that the boy could indeed jump forward and backwards in time. Glynda wasn't quite as convinced, but she could wait the twelve hours it would take to prove time travel was the way the boy had gotten a duplicate of the headmaster's staff. Still lingering doubts or no it was the right place to continue the interrogation.
"Now tell me Moses," Ozpin began as he placed his mug down, "Why did you come to this place and time?"
"It was an accident sir I swear!" Moses pleaded.
"Accident's happen," Ozpin allowed, "Just take a few deep breaths and start from the beginning. You're not in trouble with me, and the more I know the more I can help."
"Okay," Moses breathed, "Okay. So time travel's funny right? The reason I was poking around your records room is cause I was looking for a way to supercharge my semblance. Give myself enough juice to jump back to my own present. I usually only have enough juice to jump back and forward a few minutes at a time, but sometimes I have enough in the tank to jump back and forward a few weeks. There doesn't seem to be a rhyme or reason to how much juice I have in the tank, so I was with my friends and we were experimenting, trying to figure out its' hard limits you know? Well someone asked If I could bring someone with me on my time jumps, and I didn't know the answer. So my best friend volunteers and..."
Moses trails off as if he's at a loss for words. Ozpin remains silent, hoping to let the boy gather his thoughts. Glynda is less patient.
"So you brought your best friend here too?" She asks as she continues to bore a hole in the back of Moses' head with her glare.
"Yes," Moses answers in a distracted tone, a frown of deep thought growing on his face.
"Then could you tell me what they're up to and what they look like so they can join us in this discussion?" Glynda presses.
"My best friend is Jaune Arc's oldest kid," Moses explained. The dismissive part of Ozpin's mind wanted to chalk up that undescriptive description as an effort to protect his friend, but the way Moses said it made Ozpin dismiss that dismissal. Something odd was happening here. "Jaune Arc's second oldest inherited his Aura Amp, only they can shoot in in a beam, and they zapped us with it as I tried to jump. They're a prankster who get's a lot of dumb ideas you see."
Ozpin wasn't sure what Aura Amp was, but given the context he could guess it was Mr. Arc's semblance, and from the name it probably supercharged people's Auras. A useful bit of knowledge Ozpin could use to help his student once this time travel mess was sorted out. Ozpin put that musing aside as Moses continued.
"Anyways the brat zaps the two of us... the three of us?" Moses' thoughtful frown grew deeper. "Me and them makes two... no three. No more than three cause twins. No more than two cause there's only one of them."
"Excuse me?" Glynda asked.
"My memories are all jumbled up," Moses whined. "This is like a week before Jaune started dating his wife, and we're here now andthings are changing..."
Alarm filled Ozpin's mind with that statement. "Are you saying," Ozpin inquired in a calm tone that hid his concern, "that your presence here changes who Mr. Arc marries, and you're remembering a different friend than the one you brought here?"
"Kinda," Moses began to rub his temples.
"Elaborate Mr. Nebogipfel," Glynda's tone didn't hide the alarm she was feeling, and apparently that was enough to set the young man off.
"I BROUGHT ALL OF THEM HERE! OKAY!" Moses snapped, "Every possible version of Jaune Arc's firstborn is here! And each and every one of them has some harebrained scheme to make sure Jaune marries their mom! I need to find a way to supercharge my semblance and grab them before they do something crazy!"
A deep BOOM reverberated in the distance, followed a few seconds later by the gonging sound of something hitting the office's window. Ozpin slowly turned his chair around, and was treated to the sight of a boy who looked like a younger version of Jaune Arc with Ruby Rose's hair color and silver eyes. The silver eyed boy was pressed up against the glass and slowly sliding down it as if this was a humous moment in an animated feature instead of real life. Then the silver eye boy pushed off the window and dove through the air back the way he had came.
A moment passed, and Ozpin grabbed his coffee mug while standing up. He took three nonplussed strides to his window and gazed out upon the scene of bedlam taking place in the courtyard.
Pyrrha Nikos was fighting back to back with a redheaded boy who had Jaune's eyes; their opponents Blake Belladonna, a handful of female exchange students Ozpin couldn't quite recognize at this distance, and kids who were probably the children of the exchange students. A pair of blonde cat Faunus, obviously male and female fraternal twins, were running around with a hogtied Yang Xiao Long slung over their shoulders while being chased by a girl who could only be Yang's daughter, the sliver eye boy, and a distraught Ruby Rose. A boy who looked a lot like a Schnee was yelling at Weiss, who stood as still as a statue with a look of disturbed incomprehension on her face. A girl who Ozpin believed was Emerald Sustrai was holding a child in a fireman's cary while running as if their lives depended on it; and if the way her team leader Cinder Fall was chasing her while screaming things like "Traitor!" and "Ungrateful Harlot!" loud enough that Ozpin could sort of hear them in his office was any indication, they very well could be.
Nora Valkyrie stood off to the side cheering the chaos on, occasionally firing a grenade into the scrum when it looked like Pyrrha and her probably son were getting overwhelmed. Jaune Arc stood beside Nora clearly at a loss as to what he should be doing. Lie Ren had placed a comforting right hand on his team leader's shoulder, and was facepalming with the left.
Ozpin took a long sip from his coffee mug, a quick glance to his left and right confirming that Moses and Glynda had joined him at the window. He then drawled; "Well, the good news is that doing something crazy didn't collapse the space-time continuum. Mr. Nebogipfel, if you'd follow me to the nurse's office, it looks like you've developed a bit of a migraine."
"Yeah, I have actually." Moses admitted as he rubbed his temples, shifting memories and friends beingunbelievably stupidcould do that.
"Alright then," Ozpin stepped away from the window, "Ms. Goodwitch, I believe you have a riot to suppress."
"With prejudice sir," Glynda agreed as she brandished her riding crop.
The time: Several hours before Glynda Goodwitch catches Moses Nebogipfel snooping around Beacon's records rooms.
The place: A camping ground on the edge of Beacon's campus, a dining hall specifically.
"Our best bet is to trust Moses," A redheaded boy named Xander declared with all the authority he could muster. "He finds a way to recharge his semblance, he takes us back to the future, and none of us have to worry about which one of us is from the real timeline because we didn't change anything!"
That was the plan Moses had given them before he ran off, and as far as Xander was concerned it was a good enough plan to stick to. Sure there was a degree of uncertainty that he'd still be around to see it finished, but he wasn't going to risk the stability of the space-time continuum to alleviate his own fears. If he was the true son of Jaune Arc destiny would see things though, and if he wasn't it would't. There were times and places where one should defy fate, and this wasn't one of them.
Unfortunately most of his paradox half siblings didn't see things that way, and it was taking all of Xander's knowledge and experience with wrangling his own younger siblings to keep everyone from running off to do who knows what to history. This experience was somewhat dulled by the fact that everyone else here was also an older sibling who knew all the same tricks, but at least he had backup in from the most forceful personality in the room; a girl named Dorothy who also agreed that Moses' plan was the best plan.
"The butterfly effect is something nobody should be messing around with," Dorothy affirmed. "If Moses had mastered his semblance then maybe we'd be able to take some risks, but we all know he hasn't, so we shouldn't."
The round robin meeting they were holding was a compromise all the half siblings had agreed to in order to avoid a fight. Even those unhappy with Moses' plan knew that trying to break off to do their own thing would just get them dogpiled by everyone else whose existence was also at risk. And so as long as everyone stayed here until Moses got back a terse détente could be maintained.
"Um..." a silver eyed boy raised his hand.
"Yes Julian?" Xander called for the boy to speak.
"Where are the Faunus twins?"
The dining hall erupted into a cacophony of motion, and pandemonium reigned.
"You okay Leandra?" A blond cat faunus boy asked as a girl who looked a lot like him dry heaved. The two of them stood atop a skyscraper in downtown Vale, and the boy seriously hoped the girl wasn't about to dump her breakfast on an unsuspecting pedestrian below.
"Ugh, I'll be fine Leander," Leandra groaned as she returned to standing straight. "Why is it whenever we travel with your semblance I get a tummy ache, but when we travel with mine you're always fine? We have the same semblance! You should get a tummy ache too!"
"It's a mystery for the ages," Leander agreed as he pulled his twin sister away from the roof's edge, "But we can't dwell on that now. We need to plan. What do we know about how mom and dad got together?"
"Umm... Mom was seriously considering asking Uncle Sun out, but decided to ask Dad out instead after she introduced Aunt Ilia to Sun and she saw how well they got along?" Was what Leandra pulled from her memory.
"That sounds right," Leander nodded, "So the first thing we need to do is find Aunt Ilia and get her to Beacon."
"Okay, that's step one, let's go!" Leandra rushed to the legs of the Skyscraper's water-tower, her brother only a few steps behind her. The water-tower's legs were only a few inches wide, not nearly big enough for someone to disappear behind them, yet disappear is exactly what the twins did.
The wind blew over an empty roof.
"Now we're going to find them, and we are going to do that as a team!" Xander declared after order had been restored to the dinning hall. "We are going to move as a group, and we are going to keep a close eye on one another-"
"The other twins slipped away during the ruckus" A Schnee looking boy interjected.
The tension in the air spiked, and Xander felt what little control he had over the group slipping from his fingers. He needed a dragon of a threat to keep everyone in line, but his go to threat wouldn't work in this situation. He needed to think of something else fast. Unfortunately Dorothy was faster, and her threat was the reflexive one Xander was trying to avoid.
"EVERYONE STAY WHERE YOU ARE OR I'M TELLING MOM!" Dorothy bellowed.
At that moment Xander knew the situation was unsalvageable. The whole problem was that everyone here had a different mom, meaning the prospect of getting mom involved was less of a threat and more like something that sounded like-
"That's a good idea!" Julian grinned with genuine glee right before he dashed out of the room before anyone else could react.
That was when the damn broke, and within a few seconds Xander found himself alone with Dorothy as the other kids stampeded away.
Silence hung in the air for a few moments, and then Xander sighed as the tension left his shoulders. "Well, are you going to get your mom?" He asked Dorothy.
"Oh Gods," the girl replied with the air of someone who just had the most horrific realization of their life, "I can't go get my mom to help out on this!"
"Alright, look," Xander grabbed her shoulders and looked Dorothy in the eye, "My mom can probably beat the breaks off of their moms, so I'm going to get her and try to regain some control over this situation. If you can't get your mom then you can at least get out there and catch some of the slower ones, right?"
"Right," Dorothy agreed as confidence returned to her eyes. She charged from the room, Xander following close behind.
A few moments after they were gone the other twins pulled themselves out from under the desk they had hidden behind. The two of them had messy black hair and eyes perfect for sitting in a corner and brooding.
"You want to get mom Ash?" The female twin asked her brother.
"Nah, mom was a doomsday device short of being a supervillain at this point in her life. It'd be counterproductive," Ash replied. "What do you think we should do Ashley?"
"Hmmm..." Ashley cupped her chin in deep thought, then after a whole minute she gave her answer; "We should find the armory. Get some heavier ordnance than what everyone else is packing right now. Then we put Mom's competition in the hospital long enough for Mom and Dad to notice each other."
"That's a pretty dark plan."
"This is literally an 'us or them' scenario Ash. We don't have time for paragon behavior."
"Fine, but when this bites us in the ass you're the one explaining this to Dad, capeesh?"